


A Remedy for the Heart

by anewspringwillcome



Category: Project Octopath Traveler (Video Game)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Family Dynamics, Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-24
Updated: 2018-06-24
Packaged: 2019-05-28 02:29:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15038681
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anewspringwillcome/pseuds/anewspringwillcome
Summary: Late night at an inn in Flamesgrace, Alfyn mixes a salve for a wound, and Primrose learns a more hopeful outlook for the future.Tressa sleeps soundly through the whole thing.





	A Remedy for the Heart

**Author's Note:**

> Nothing has excited me to write this much in ages. Here's another party dynamic. If you read romantic tones out of any of the relationships, I haven't yet decided if it was done intentionally. 
> 
> Also Tressa is just a permanent fixture in everything I write now. I love her a lot.

Primrose listened to the mingled sounds of the ticking grandfather clock and Tressa’s light breathing for what felt like hours before Alfyn finally returned. In his arms he juggled a couple small wooden bowls and utensils, along with that slightly tattered old messenger bag he always wore.

“Apologies for taking so long,” he said, setting some of his things down on the elm table Primrose had taken station at. He held up one of the wooden bowls and offered it to her. “Dinner. You should eat.”

“Thank you,” Primrose said and took the bowl, denoting with a sense of appreciation the heat radiating from the thing and warming the icy skin of her hands. It had taken a few days of travel to finally reach Flamesgrace, and the craving for a real, cooked meal had grown with each day -- salads of foraged greens and the dried meats Tressa had bought off a merchant back in S'warkii left something to be desired.

Alfyn was looking amusedly at Tressa’s sleeping form, bundled under the blankets in the room’s solitary bed. “I told her not to fall asleep before I came back with food.”

“Well, you did take a while,” Primrose pointed out, unable to prevent the tenderness she felt for the girl from tinting her voice. It always made her smile to notice the slow rise and fall of Tressa’s chest as she slept -- sleeping was truly the only mode the girl had that wasn’t full of energy.

“That reminds me.” Alfyn had set Tressa’s dinner on the table and was rummaging through his bag for something. “I found something for that cut on your side.” The bit of food Primrose had been chewing on seemed to sour on her tongue, and she swallowed it with a nauseating gulp. Alfyn smiled sympathetically. “Did you think I hadn’t noticed?”

“I suppose that was wishful,” Primrose said.

“A little bit,” Alfyn replied. “It _is_ my job. I would have done something about it as soon as I joined you and Tressa if it weren’t already so infected when we met. One of the herbs I needed doesn’t grow around the Riverlands, and it’s such a rare infection that we only stock up with the changing of seasons.”

He sounded friendly as ever, even as he took on the teaching tone he always had to his voice when talking medicine, but his eyes were serious and focused as he started mixing ingredients. “Tressa and I have been asking everyone we meet for a lead. It wasn’t until tonight that I finally found a merchant selling it.” The man glanced up briefly, his eyes settling for a moment on Primrose’s -- just long enough to say, “it could have ended very badly.” She looked away, feeling heat creep into her face because she _knew_ it was foolish, and she had ignored the warning signs anyway.

“If it had been allowed to develop any further, you likely wouldn’t have recovered,” he said, and looked back to his work.

It wasn’t a scolding -- Alfyn probably wasn’t capable of trying to scold anyone without a smile remaining on his face -- but it felt like one anyway. The words hung there, just another sound mixing with the clock’s ticks and Tressa’s breaths as neither Primrose nor Alfyn said anymore for a long while.

Finally, steadying her voice, she said, “I didn’t ask for help because I knew you would ask how I received the wound.”

Alfyn only continued crushing a newly added ingredient into what was quickly becoming a tan-colored salve. “I haven’t asked how you received the wound _yet_ , have I?”

“You expect me to tell you,” Primrose said.

His eyebrows rose in vague surprise as he looked back up at her. “What makes you think that?”

“All people expect something,” she said quietly, the tone in her voice sounding equally as detached as she felt about knowing such a disappointing truth of humanity.

Alfyn’s eyebrows drew together slightly, and he seemed to have some realization, and Primrose felt too much like he was starting to look at her like he felt bad for her. “Well, I certainly don’t expect anything from you, other than perhaps not to rob me for everything I have and escape in the night. And I would wager Tressa feels the same. Let me see,” he said, gesturing for her arm.

Primrose shrugged out of the afghan she had wrapped around herself, a hand-made thing Tressa had brought from her home village and insisted she use to stay warm for the night in the wintry Flamesgrace climate. She inched the hem of her top up so that Alfyn could easily inspect the wound, which was at least a few inches long and surrounded by splotchy, purpling skin. It etched the side of her right breast. Revealing such a private spot -- a spot which _should_ have been private, should have taken some time to earn -- to someone she barely knew was not a new experience for Primrose, but with Alfyn, whose eyes did not linger and who held none of the sickening lust of the many who had looked before him, it _felt_ new. Removed from association with the sordid sexual encounters she had endured out of necessity for so many years, she was almost able to avoid thinking of those times entirely.

Alfyn looked disapprovingly at the wound as he poured some kind of alcohol onto a cotton cloth. “I need to disinfect it. This may sting.”

To his credit, Alfyn was gentle in his meticulous cleaning of the wound, but the stinging still made Primrose wince in discomfort. When he seemed satisfied with it, he dabbed an unsoiled cloth into the salve he had mixed together and started to apply it to the gash with small blotting motions. Finally, he made to bandage the area with a light gauze and dressing, an act which required a more direct touch.

Primrose supposed it was meant to distract her from the firmness of his hands when he started talking again. “My friend Zeph, from back home, once made himself sick trying to concoct this ointment. Grabbed powdered mustard when he meant to grab powdered melon. Mustard has an adverse reaction with noxroot. He was sick in bed for days from the fumes.”

Primrose watched him grin at the memory as she tugged her top back down over her chest, and when she tried to recall something from her recent past that elicited such a happy nostalgia, she came up short.

“I don't have friends back in Sunshade,” she said, an attempt to reciprocate sharing something about herself. It was such a simple fact of her life that she didn’t think much of it until Alfyn glanced at her kind of sadly. “Well, I know-- _knew--_ this girl who I suppose would be considered a friend.” She looked down at her hands, twirling a thread of yarn that had come loose from the afghan around her finger to avoid the look she knew she would earn when she muttered, “Tressa sometimes reminds me of her.” She could feel his eyes, and the sadness they seemed to hold was evident without even having to look -- somehow he seemed to recognize that Tressa reminding her of Yusufa and Tressa being the first person she had felt comfortable enough to travel the realm with were not unrelated things. “Just a little. They’re both far too kind for their own good.”

“She is very kind,” Alfyn agreed softly. “I had never met someone so excited just to be alive before I met her.”

As Primrose glanced over at the man, who gazed at Tressa’s sleeping form with an honest fondness she had never had the liberty to indulge in, it crossed her mind that she couldn’t have found a more unlikely pair to join up with if she tried. They were both so earnest to help others. Somehow being in their presence filled her with both unimaginable appreciation and a lingering worry that she would be the cause of their demise -- in her pursuit of vengeance for her father, she would lead them into something evil and deadly and unintentionally become the reason two truly good people no longer walked the realm.

“She thinks the world of you,” Alfyn said, grinning at her in the dim light.

“She thinks the world of most everyone,” Primrose pointed out, but still her heart warmed at the idea.

“Maybe,” Alfyn said. “But you especially. She’s always telling me about your travels together from before I joined up with the two of you.”

Primrose thought back to the day she had met Tressa -- the virtuous light in the girl’s eyes that had made Primrose decide to trust her for the time being, the way she had fought at Primrose’s side through the very battle in which she had received the wound on her breast, the complete determination with which she had said “where do you want to head first?” in response to Primrose’s vow to continue seeking out her father’s killers.

“I think highly of her too,” Primrose said, almost in a whisper.

Her fears of what was to come weighed heavy on her mind as she considered this caring girl who had so wholeheartedly adopted her objective with little hesitation, this girl who reminded her of Yusufa--Yusufa, whom she had already lost. And the man at her side, who she didn’t know all that well yet, but who had saved her just now -- who strived to save everyone he could, just because it was what he knew was right. She couldn’t lead these people, these _kids --_ barely even adults -- to what might be their doom.

“They were able to fix another room for me.” Alfyn stood, replacing his things in his bag. “I just wanted to get that gash taken care of tonight. It should heal nicely if you apply the salve a couple times a day for a while.”

“Thank you,” Primrose said, and she meant it, but her voice sounded far away, her thoughts still clouded with worry.

“Get some sleep,” Alfyn said, smiling, and he opened the door to leave. Before he was even halfway out, though, he turned back. “And whatever you’re worrying about, just… try not to, alright? Whatever it is, the three of us can handle it together. Tomorrow’s a brand new day.”

And then he was gone, and the room quieted again, and -- still with a vague sense of worry in her stomach -- she allowed herself the time to recognize just how _tired_ she was. As she sat there, wrapped in a handmade afghan and listening to the tick-tocks, and the light breathing, and the millions of troubled thoughts racing through her mind, she decided that maybe those thoughts could wait. _Tomorrow was a brand new day._ There was only here and now, at this moment, in an inn with two people she found herself caring more for with each minute she spent with them. And perhaps caring wasn’t such a bad thing.

 


End file.
